maryam a.

moshav er

The Poetics of Music Theory and the Writings of

Rameau and Hauptmann
The history of music theory can be viewed as the history of transformations in the form
of knowledge that, often in parallel to changing scientific and philosophical ideas, redefine
parameters of focus, and develop alternative viewpoints through which to understand the
meaning and workings of music. The theoretical writings of Jean-Philippe Rameau and
Moritz Hauptmann offer a striking instance of such a transformation, offering a relatively
unambiguous view of the shift in the nineteenth century from an epistemology rooted in
empirical fact and conceived in terms of a poetics of representation, to one that grounds
itself on a poetics of formation and the phenomenology of the subjective cognitive act. What
is brought to focus in this article is the palpably different theoretical spaces fashioned by two
systematic theorists, both concerned with unifying the rules of harmony under their natural
principles.

The diversity of our opinions does not arise from the fact that some people are more reasonable than others, but solely from the fact that we lead our thoughts along different paths and
do not take the same things into consideration.
Descartes, Discourse on Method

Moritz Hauptmann begins his introduction to the Nature of Harmony and Meter (1853)1
with an extended critique of the custom of starting thoroughbass or composition textbooks
with an acoustical chapter to explain the determination and harmonic relation of the
intervals through their arrangement in a progressive series of ratios, either acoustical or
of corresponding string length (NHM, xxxv). Hauptmanns objective is not to dispute
mathematical certainties or acoustical facts, but to question an epistemology that attempts
to locate a foundational explanation for musical practice in the ordered series of progressive
identities and differences of a sounding object. The very representation of harmonic relations
in terms of an uninterrupted ordered sequence, Hauptmann argues, carries in its train an
extraneous logic that draws on the relative position of elements on a fixed, progressive scale,
classifying harmonies as natural (major) and artificial (minor), intonation as savage and
civilized, and conceiving consonance and dissonance not as qualitative distinctions but
according to a scale of relative complexity or comprehensibility (NHM, xxxvxxxviii). What
is more, neither an unambiguous demarcation of the triad, nor the clear distinction between
consonance and dissonance necessary for establishing the rules of harmonic practice, nor
indeed, in the case of the acoustical series, true intonation can be gleaned from such data.
As a result, Hauptmann observes, the acoustical and numerical ratio systems with which
thoroughbass and compositional texts commonly begin, having no further ramification in
the presentation of the harmonic doctrine that follows, remain separate and external to the
main body of the text, which, in effect, must resume its discussion of harmony by way of a
second beginning a position that is theoretically indefensible (NHM, xxxviii).
1

Die Natur der Harmonik und der Metrik: Zur Theorie der Musik [1853], Leipzig: Breitkopf & Hrtel, 1873.
Translated as The Nature of Harmony and Meter, ed. and transl. W.E. Heathcote, New York: Da Capo Press,
1989. Abbreviated hereafter NHM. Page references in text are to the Heathcote translation; quotations of the
German text refer to the second, 1873 edition.

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In his treatise, Hauptmann attempts to reorient music theory under the logical discipline
of a genuine, or real beginning that contains in itself the germ of every subsequent
theoretical development, from its broadest to its narrowest applications (NHM, xxxviii)
a germ, he argues, that precedes the empirical reality of the sounding object, and underlies
it as a logical principle determining both the interrelation of its parts and its possibilities
of development.2 Rather than to deduce the principles of harmony from a serialized
arrangement of parts, Hauptmanns organicist viewpoint takes the self-determining
autonomy and coherence of the life-form as its model, where the organizing principle
of the whole not only precedes the formation of the parts, but is disclosed only in the
emerging determination of these parts, in their interdependence, and in their reciprocal
relations.
The present article takes Hauptmanns distinction between music-theoretical
methodologies having as their starting point ontological first principles, and the
reconfiguration of theoretical discourse from a dialectical beginning (as exemplified in
the NHM ) as its subject of investigation.3 My focus, however, is not on practical points of
theoretical contention as such, but rather, on the poetics of music-theoretical construction,
its language-technologies and modes of deducing (or producing) the tonal-harmonic
sphere that speak to a prevailing world-view and a shared understanding of the form of
what constitutes knowledge.4 In this context, Rameaus theory of the fundamental bass,
organized around the mathematical and acoustical properties of the corps sonore offers a
rich field of comparison.5
Both Rameau and Hauptmann set themselves the task of bringing music theory under
the governance of nature, not with the intention to innovate or modify musical practice,
2

This underlying grammar, Hauptmann argues, functions as a shaping principle (Gestaltungsprincip) or

formative process (Gestaltungsprozess) that constitutes the natural basis for the laws of harmony and
meter, both superseding musical elements and determining their shape, like a motive force lurking beneath
manifestation (NHM, xliii).
3 For a detailed discussion of the ramifications of an ontological as opposed to a dialectical beginning, see
Theodor W. Adorno, Against Epistemology, transl. Willis Domingo, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982,
Introduction.
4 The prototypes of this kind of comparative study are Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, New York: Vintage
Books, 1970, and Friedrich Kittler, Discourse Networks 1800/1900, transl. Michael Metteer and Chris Cullens,
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990. See also Jairo Moreno, Musical Representations, Subjects and
Objects: The Construction of Musical Thought in Zarlino, Descartes, Rameau and Weber, Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2004.
5 Though the combination into a single treatise of the speculative tradition of musica theorica with the
concerns with compositional application of musica pratica dates from Zarlinos Istitutioni harmoniche (1558),
the integration of the two branches of music theory remains difficult. Rameaus theoretical work, in its
concerted effort to reflect the preeminence of the perfect triad in the composition of the corps sonore itself
and to derive the principles of chord-succession directly from that structure, shows an effort to integrate the
speculative and practical branches of music theory, and would seem to fall, in its intention at least, outside
the purview of Hauptmanns critique. A focus on the logical form that underlies Rameaus and Hauptmanns
configurations of tonal theory, however, will clarify the kind of separation between form and content that
Hauptmann has in mind, and will help to situate Hauptmanns work in the context of the post-Kantian
idealist critiques of empiricism. Besides its widespread general influence, among the most relevant aspects
of Rameaus theory for Hauptmann (though appearing in reconfigured form and from within a different
logic), are the preeminence of the structure of the triad as a source for harmonic logic, the symmetrical
formation around the tonic of the subdominant and dominant triads and the derivation of the scale from
this spatial ordering of the primary triads, the downward, directional derivation of the minor third, and the
notion of the mixture of chords, as in Rameaus explanation of the dominant 7th chord incorporating in itself
the root of the subdominant.

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but with the goal of theoretical clarification and systematization. In either case, the nature
in question is not an unmediated given, but rather a nature constructed under the tutelage
of reason. In both instances, to invoke nature is to lay claim to an objectivity and an ideal
authority that is synonymous with science, or nature as it is revealed by science. What is
instructive, however, is the means of access to this objective space, its construction, indeed
the poetics of the natural, in Rameaus and Hauptmanns theories. My discussion, limited
to the methodological cast of the presentation of the major triad in Rameaus Trait de
lharmonie and Nouveau systme de la musique thorique et pratique,6 and in Hauptmanns
NHM, will thus focus on two different approaches to the trope of nature, understood,
respectively, as product and as process. The concern with methodological consistency
in both Rameaus and Hauptmanns writings affords a relatively unambiguous view of
the shift in the nineteenth century from an epistemology rooted in empirical fact and
conceived in terms of a poetics of representation, to one that grounds itself on a poetics of
formation and a phenomenology of the subjective, cognitive act. My objective is to show
the very palpable difference in logical connection and sequence of ideas, between two
distinct interpretations of how the figure of nature is used as a unifying paradigm and a
category of thought.
References to nature abound in Rameaus works, though the term gradually shifts in
significance. In his first publication, the Treatise on Harmony Reduced to its Natural
Principles (1722), nature is used synonymously with reason. Here, the natural principle
of music is founded following the Cartesian model on the principle of mathematical
ordering. It is by means of this principle of ordering that Rameau exhibits the conditions
whereby the source, origin, and proper application of the rules of musical practice can
be made intelligible to the understanding.7 Following his discovery of Sauveurs work on
the acoustical properties of sound,8 however, and the publication in 1726 of the Nouveau
systme de lharmonie, the domain of nature shifts increasingly to the side of an unerring
sensory awareness which it is reasons task to confirm empirically and to systematize. This
amounts to a seeming reversal of Rameaus initial position, suggesting a priority of nature
as an immediate given over reason. The natural ordering principle, in other words, is
no longer understood as belonging exclusively to the domain of the mind; rather, reason
learns from nature, and it is in nature itself that it discovers the coherence of order: a

6 Trait de lharmonie rduite ses principes naturels, Paris: Ballard, 1722, translated as Treatise on Harmony,
transl. Philip Gossett, New York: Dover Publications, 1971; Nouveau systme de musique thorique et pratique,
Paris: Ballard, 1726, translated as Rameaus Nouveau systme de musique thorique: An Annotated Translation
with Commentary, transl. Glenn B. Chandler, Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI, 1977. References to the Trait de
lharmonie are to the Gossett translation.
7 Rameau writes in the Preface to the Treatise: Music is a science which should have definite rules; these rules
should be drawn from an evident principle; and this principle cannot really be known to us without the aid
of mathematics. Notwithstanding all the experience I may have acquired in music from being associated
with it for so long, I must confess that only with the aid of mathematics did my ideas become clear and did
light replace a certain obscurity of which I was unaware before. Though I did not know how to distinguish
the principle from the rules, the principle soon offered itself to me in a manner convincing in its simplicity.
I then recognized that the consequences it revealed constituted so many rules following from this principle.
The true sense of these rules, their proper application, their relationships, their sequence (the simplest always
introducing the less simple, and so on by degrees), and finally the choice of terms; all this, I say, of which I was
ignorant before, developed in my mind with clarity and precision (Treatise, xxxv, emphasis mine).
8 Joseph Sauveur, Collected Writings on Musical Acoustics (Paris 1700-1713), ed. Rudolf Rasch, Utrecht: Diapason
Press, 1984.

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coherence that it emulates, extends and elaborates in art and science.9 However, far from
invalidating the rationalist approach to which Rameau was committed at the time of
writing of the Treatise, his subsequent awareness of the natural properties of the sonorous
body served rather to confirm the theory he had developed using his earlier methodology.
Nonetheless, the shift is significant insofar as it allows the art of music, in conformity
with Enlightenment aesthetics, to be understood not as the mere product of artifice and
convention, but as imitating the harmony and the forms of nature.10
In the preface to the Trait de lharmonie, Rameau begins by making a distinction, in
the study of music, between reason and experience. From experience, he states, from what
the ear directly perceives, we can discern the properties of music and its effects. Experience
can be kind to the artist, can seduce him, enabling him daily to discover the beauties of his
art; yet, lacking the knowledge and the language with which to communicate it to others,
this felicity will remain confined to him alone (Treatise, xxxiv). As a result, teaching the
art of music will necessarily depend on an incomplete assortment of empirical rules
at the limit of which the student is abandoned to what he can glean for himself, aided
by experience alone. Accordingly, the certainty and clarity of knowledge and its power
to awaken genius and taste is cut short, and the art and science of music is limited to
mere talent.11 What experience lacks, however, reason can discover. Hidden behind the
empirical rules of music, incomplete and confused by long experience and prejudice, lies
the evident principle from which the true sense of these rules, their proper application,
their relationships, their sequence (the simplest always introducing the less simple and
so on by degrees) and finally the choice of terms with which to describe them, becomes
visible (Treatise, xxxv, emphasis mine). Like Hauptmann, Rameau seeks not to reformulate
9 David Cohen has discussed the relation between reason and nature in Rameaus theory in his essay The
Gift of Nature: Musical Instinct and Musical Cognition in Rameau in: Suzannah Clark and Alexander
Rehding (eds), Music Theory and Natural Order, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, 68-92. For a
comprehensive discussion of Rameaus theoretical works in the context of his interaction with the complex
intellectual world of the French Enlightenment see Thomas Christensen, Rameau and Musical Thought in the
Enlightenment, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. On Rameaus contribution in the context of
eighteenth-century theory see Joel Lester, Compositional Theory in the Eighteenth Century, Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1992. On the descriptive function of the fundamental bass, see Allan Keiler, Music
as Metalanguage: Rameaus Fundamental Bass, in: Richmond Browne (ed.), Music Theory Special Topics,
New York: Academic Press, 1981, 83-100.
10 In contrast to Rameau, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) writes with regard to music: We still have no
idea whether our system of music is not based on pure conventions; we have no idea whether its principles
are not entirely arbitrary, and whether any other system substituted for ours would not end up, through
familiarity, by pleasing us just as much. Quoted in: Tzvetan Todorov, Theories of the Symbol, transl. Catherine
Porter, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982, 126n15. Rameau, on the other hand, in Observations sur notre
instinct pour la musique (1754), sees a relation of reciprocity and mutual reinforcement between convention
and pure unschooled instinct: If we ordinarily sing the third first in ascending the perfect chord, despite the
fact that the sonorous body doesnt give it except at the double octave, which is the 17th, [and occurs] above
the octave and fifth which is its 12th, it is that we naturally reduce all intervals to their smallest size, because
the ear appreciates them more promptly, and because the voice can reach them with greater ease; but such
would not be the case for a man without experience, who had neither heard nor listened to music for there
is a difference between hearing and listening. If this man [were to] intone a clear and distinct low tone, and
he then [were to] allow his voice, quickly and without premeditation not even of the interval he wants to
traverse [to continue] in a purely mechanical move, he [would] certainly intone the fifth first, in preference to
any other interval (emphasis mine). Jean-Philippe Rameau: Complete Theoretical Writings vol. III, ed. Erwin R.
Jacobi, American Institute of Musicology, 1968, 268-269.
11 [T]horough knowledge activates genius and taste which, without it, would often become useless talents
(Treatise, xxxvi).

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the rules of music, but to exhibit the conditions through which their source, origin, and
nature can be made available to the understanding.
The relationship between sounds, Rameau states, can be known by way of various
forms of measuring and dividing, and by subsequently comparing the results of these
operations: for example, by analyzing the numerical relations of string divisions; or
alternatively, by measuring and comparing the lengths of string obtained by these
divisions; or by comparing the number of vibrations released into the atmosphere
when strings of different lengths are plucked; or measuring the gradations of thickness,
weight, and tension of strings for the production of sound (Treatise, 4). But the essential
insight that is necessary if any of these interchangeable operations are to lead to a clear
understanding of the principles of music, is that of following the logical sequence of the
numerical translation of these relationships in their natural progression.12
The starting point for Rameaus investigation is to distinguish the generating source of
harmony from among the combinations of consonances with which it was haphazardly
combined in the figured bass theories of his time.13 Following Descartes observation in
the Compendium Musicae (1619)14 that the smaller intervals obtained from the division of
a string are already contained in the whole, Rameau locates this source in the undivided
string (represented by the number 1, unity) and its first six subdivisions, producing in
sequence, the octave (division by 2); the perfect 12th (division by 3); the double octave
(division by 4); the major 17th (division by 5); and the perfect 19th (division by 6). The
seventh division, yielding the dissonant interval of the minor 7th (minor 21st), interrupts
the series. Hence it is the consonant quality of the intervals generated by the progression
of the first six subdivisions that determines the limits of the sequence, keeping it from
continuing indefinitely. This series of consonances is framed by a final, limiting division
of the string by 8, which yields the third and last replication of the fundamental note in
the series. This final division makes it possible to compare each of the generated sounds
both to its source below, and to its higher octave (Treatise, 9). The principle of inversion
is thus generalized in tabular form in Example 1 (Treatise, 7).
The table in Example 1, generated from a linear sequence of progressive divisions in
order of complexity, contains in itself an entire genealogy of relations and combinational
possibilities. On the primary level are the fundamental sound and its directly generated
intervals. On a secondary level are the comparisons of the directly generated intervals
with the octaves of the fundamental (the inversions of the perfect fifth and the major
third, yielding the perfect fourth and the minor sixth respectively). On a tertiary level
are the intervals resulting from the difference of the directly generated tones among each
other, namely the minor third and its inversion, the major 6th (arising between the 5th and
6th divisions respectively).
Of course the secondary and tertiary levels we have enumerated are fused in Rameaus
table, but here we are merely interpreting in the spirit of the reasoning that Rameau has
himself developed for us so far. We must leave aside, for our present purposes, Rameaus
efforts to tamper, as it were, with the inescapable evidence of the hierarchy presented
12 Rameau points out that the numerical progression obtained from measuring the lengths of the strings
inverts the ascending progression obtainable by their division. Since the choice of operation ultimately has
no effect on the resulting harmonic relations, however, he opts, in the interest of simplicity, for the latter. For
the problems in representing his findings that Rameau encounters as a result of this choice, see Christensen,
Rameau and Musical Thought in the Enlightenment, 92-93.
13 Harmonic structures in the notational practice of the figured bass were conceived according to the intervallic
distance of individual voices from the given bass line. For a detailed discussion of the problems of figuredbass practice in the eighteenth century, see Joel Lester, Compositional Theory in the Eighteenth Century.
14 Ren Descartes, Compendium Musicae, translated as Abrg de musique, ed. and transl. Frdric de Buzon,
Paris: Press Universitaire de France, 1987.

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Example 1
Rameaus diagram of the divisions of the fundamental in the Trait de lharmonie.

8 Do
6 Sol
5 Mi
4 Do
3 Sol
2 Do
1 Do

fourth
minor
sixth
minor third
major third
triple
octave

major
sixth
fourth
fifth

double
octave

octave

in the order of generation as he sought for alternatives that would enable him among
other things to represent the minor third, too, as a directly generated interval on an
equal footing with the major third; where the instinct of the artist could not be deflected
from its desire to manipulate the inexorable logic of method to match its own aesthetic
certainties. Yet we cannot ignore Rameaus uneasiness at the way his scientific approach
contradicted and resisted his musical instinct. We might remark in passing that similar to
its Cartesian precedent, there lurks beneath the initial eidetic reduction that is Rameaus
starting point beneath that first bracketing of all theoretical tradition, and the return to
the uncluttered simplicity of the source of sound (the undivided string) a conviction
that this ordered, scientific, methodical view will confirm and restore without change the
musical tastes and practices of his day.15
The most important aspect of the table for Rameaus purposes is that the possibility
of integrating the intervals into a single unity that is capable of preserving its identity in
any of its possible combinations is inextricably linked to the progressive generation of
the intervals from a single fundamental source (Treatise, 40-41). Hence the possibility
of an overarching synthesis of the object represented in the table presents itself in a way
that was unavailable in the older method of direct derivation of the intervals through

15 The expression eidetic reduction is meant here not in the strict sense understood in Husserlian
phenomenology but rather the impulse to return, unassisted by rules and conventions, to a starting point of
evident principles, as Rameau states it, from which to reconstruct the edifice anew.

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proportions.16 The combination of the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th divisions yields the perfect triad
(or the five-three position of the major triad); that of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th division yields the
six-four position of the same triad; and the 5th, 6th, and 8th divisions its six-three position,
all issuing from the same fundamental note.17 This change of perspective, that derives
harmony from a fundamental source, and that associates the fundamental bass, or root,
with the structure of the chord itself, was to bring about an almost irreversible change
in the way harmonic materials came to be described and understood. The fundamental
note possesses a new level of significance with respect to the other notes of the triad: it
now functions as a sign. It stands for the combination of elements that it unites, at the
same time representing the chord and represented within it,18 and it is this structure of
signification that stands as the basis of our present system of chord nomenclature.19 To the
extent that we name and identify chords by their roots, then, we are already committed, in
part, to the field of vision set forth in Rameaus theory.
Rameaus quest for knowledge in the light of reason is a search for origins, and the
progressive restitution of the full variety of possible harmonic combinations on the basis
of calculation and ordering, where each successive element can be returned to the certainty
of its source with the simplest, in Rameaus words cited above, always introducing the
less simple and so on by degrees. In his representation of harmonic generation,20 it is
16 Rameaus derivation of consonances through progressive divisions of the string differs crucially from
Zarlinos senario as illustrated in the Istitutioni harmoniche (1558) (translated by Marco and Palisca as The Art
of Counterpoint: Part III of the Istitutioni harmoniche, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), which in its
ordering of the superparticular ratios derives each interval directly through individual ratios:

6:5 minor third

5:4 major third

4:3 perfect fourth

3:2 perfect fifth

2:1 octave

1:1 unison

In this progression, the perfect fourth, for example, is derived directly as a fourth away from unity, and not the
shadow, as Descartes put it, of the 5th. In other words, the 4:3 proportion on a string tuned to c yields an f
directly, whereas in Rameaus system, sounding one-fourth of the same string produces another c, so that
the fourth arises not as a directly generated pitch in its own right, but as a difference, between g (the one-third
division) and that c. Zarlinos direct derivation of the consonant intervals according to a distance model,
arranged according to their natural order of perfection, precludes the synthesis that Rameau achieves in his
method of the successive divisions of the whole. The notational system of eighteenth-century figured-bass
theory before Rameau had its basis in just this concept of direct derivation of the intervals as theorized by
Zarlino. For Rameaus critique of Zarlinos use of mathematics, see Treatise, 22-25.
17 Treatise, 40-41. In the figured bass tradition as it was practiced in Rameaus time, combinations of notes
having a different order of intervals were considered different harmonic entities.
18 On the structure of the sign and its role in eighteenth-century epistemology see Foucault, The Order of Things,
64ff.
19 Rameau cites Zarlino, who, in the Istitutioni harmoniche, likens the bass to the earth, the foundation for the
other elements, that sustains, establishes, and strengthens the other parts. Were the bass to disappear, he
writes, the whole piece of music would be filled with dissonance and confusion (Istitutioni Part III, Chapter
58, 281-282). Rameau comments: But if we contrast this clear and accurate definition of the fundamental
part of harmony with the rules and examples given by this author, we find everywhere contradictions which
leave us in doubt and uncertainty (Treatise, 59).
20 On the tabular form of representation and its importance in Enlightenment epistemology see Foucaults
analysis in The Order of Things; on spatial and figurative representations in science, see Ernst Cassirer, The
Philosophy of the Enlightenment, transl. Fritz Koelln and James Pettegrove, New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 1979.

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not just the triad and its permutations that are brought simultaneously to view: the table
is the logical source for Rameaus elaboration of the concept of key-formation and the
cadential paradigm, the derivation of the seventh chord, the notion of supposition and
chord interpolation, the principles of chord succession,21 the relation of the sub- or underdominant developed in his later theory in short, all the analytical and compositional
resources of his theory are connected by a chain of deductions that ultimately are intended
to lead to and derive from modified forms of this foundational matrix of the hierarchy of
intervallic relations obtained from the ordered reconfiguration of the triad. One might
say that Rameaus compositional theory is the systematic animation of the fixed data
presented in the table.
Not just the insights, but also the shortcomings of Rameaus successive theoretical
adjustments issue from his insistence on this deductive form, issuing from a fixed point of
origin. Rameaus discovery of the acoustical properties of sound in the work of Sauveur,
and his subsequent reconfiguration of the theory around the concept of the corps sonore,
though opening a compelling new field of evidence for Rameaus argument, only subtly
alters this epistemological space by shifting the source of self-evident truth from a
mathematical beginning to a sensory one: the association of the triad with the fundamental
bass now gains the authority of empirical evidence.22 Acoustics enables Rameau to define
the triad as an immediate sensory given, no longer needing to be conceived rationally by
way of successive divisions. The method of inquiry and the principle of deduction of the
rules of harmonic progression from the analysis of its properties and makeup, remain
unchanged.
Rameaus appeal to nature and instinct notwithstanding, it must be remarked that
the principle of order, in both the mathematical and the acoustical versions of his theory,
is not the order of the genesis of any object, but the order necessitated by thought, as
the condition of its certainty and clarity. For despite the easy alignment of Rameaus
mathematical divisions with the properties of the corps sonore, the successive revisions of
the theory chronicle his continuous attempts to derive the principles of early eighteenthcentury compositional practice from a rigorous application of methodical deduction.
And it is to this repeated effort of methodical consistency, this continuous intellectual
confrontation with the contradiction between thought and thing, that Rameaus mature

21 In the first chapter of Book 2 of the Treatise Rameau discusses principles of chord progression as follows:
[W]hen we give a progression to the part representing the undivided string [i.e. the bass], we can only
make it proceed by those consonant intervals obtained by the first divisions of this string. Each sound will
consequently harmonize with the sound preceding it. As each can bear in its turn a chord similar to the chord
obtained from the first divisions, it will easily represent the undivided string, the source and foundation of the
chord ... The fifth is always preferred whenever the voice allows, but nothing is destroyed by substituting the
fourth for it. Since the fifth is constructed of two thirds, the bass, in order to hold the listener in an agreeable
state of suspense, may be made to proceed by one or several thirds, and consequently by the sixths which
represent these thirds (Treatise, 60). From the Nouveau systme (1828) onwards, these progressions by fifth
and third are codified mathematically as the geometric triple and quintuple progressions progressions
having the same quotient, generating the series 1.3.9.27.81, etc., and 1.5.25.125.625, etc. derived from the
mathematical divisions associated with the perfect fifth and major third respectively.
22 Nature is as bountiful as she is simple; she offers in her womb inexhaustible treasures; but it is up to us to
discover the paths that must lead to them. Gnration harmonique ou trait de musique thorique et pratique,
Paris: Prault fils, 1737, 11.

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theory owes its shape.23 In both the mathematical and the acoustical versions of Rameaus
theory, access to the scientific language of representation is by way of identifying the
origin, and through a series of deductive links, of reconstituting the principles of harmony
in the order in which they can be known, with certainty and without omissions. This is
the light of reason, the universal mathesis that, in Rameaus words, dispels the doubt in
which experience can at any moment plunge us (Treatise, xxxiv).
Rameaus theory originates in a reflexive act that analytically reconfigures an object that
already exists in the world, and it is to this empirical reality outside itself that the theory
ultimately refers. Hauptmann, by contrast, withdraws from the empirical existence of the
natural object, and seeks instead to understand the principle of self-formation, the essence or
nature itself of harmony and meter, as the title of his treatise (Die Natur der Harmonik und
der Metrik, or NHM) suggests. Hauptmanns organicist model takes the self-determining
autonomy and coherence of the life-form as its principal analogy, where the immanent
organizing principle of the whole is materialized and disclosed in the movement of the
reciprocal determination of its parts.24 Musical understanding, for Hauptmann, is not to be
gleaned from the empirical or mathematical properties of external objects; rather, musical
consciousness is made to emerge as the result of its own constructive power, discoverable
not through calculation, but through theoretical contemplation. It is this constructive or
formative power, the principle whereby the most diverse outward manifestations proceed
in all directions as [they are] defined from the inside outwards (NHM, xxxix, translation
slightly modified), that determines both the interrelation of the parts, and the direction and
limits of their possible development. Here, the reference to the formulations of nineteenthcentury German Naturphilosophie and romantic aesthetics is clear. The theory imitates
not the products of nature (analytically) but the processes by which nature produces them
(synthetically). No longer satisfied with the scientific analysis of the empirical object as
a source for understanding, it seeks now to grasp the object of knowledge in its organic
working and weaving in living growth (NHM, xlv). The conditions of knowledge here
described fall outside the purview of empiricist and rationalist methodologies as such. It
is not mathematical knowledge or the mechanical structure of sound that is the source of
the theorys content, but the dynamic formative process, the logical principle underlying
the emergence and transformation of its elements, in which process, form, and content
emerge as inextricably united in the concept of the whole. Knowledge in this view rests
on an interiority of consciousness both surrendered, as it were, to the life of the object,
23 For critiques of Rameaus logic and methods of reasoning see Matthew Shirlaw, Theory of Harmony, DeKalb:
Coar, 1955; Thomas Christensen, Rameau and Musical Thought in the Enlightenment; Joel Lester, Rameau
and Eighteenth-Century Harmonic Theory, in: Christensen (ed.), Cambridge History of Western Music Theory,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, 753-777; Philip Gosset, translators introduction to the Treatise
on Harmony (op. cit.); Deborah Hayes, Rameaus Theory of Harmonic Generation, PhD dissertation, Stanford
University, 1968; Glenn Chandler, Rameaus Nouveau systme de musique thorique: An Annotated Translation
with Commentary, Ann Arbor: Michigan: UMI, 1977; David Lewin, Two Interesting Passages in Rameaus
Trait, In Theory Only 4/3 (1978), 3-11. For dAlemberts critique of Rameaus use (and abuse) of geometry
see the Discours Prliminaire in the 1762 re-edition of the Elemens de musique thorique et pratique suivant
les principes de M. Rameau (1752), New York: Broude Brothers, 1966, and Thomas Christensen, Science and
Music Theory in the Enlightenment: dAlemberts Critique of Rameau, PhD dissertation, Yale University, 1985.
24 For studies on dialectical form and organicism in Hauptmanns work see esp. Peter Rummenhller, Moritz
Hauptmann als Theoretiker, Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Hrtel, 1963; Wilhelm Seidel, Moritz Hauptmanns
organische Lehre, International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 2/2 (1971), 423-466; Lotte Thaler,
Organische Form in der Musiktheorie des 19. und beginnenden 20. Jahrhunderts, Berliner Musikwissenschaftliche
Arbeiten 25, Mnchen: E. Katzbichler, 1984; and Lothar Schmidt, Organische Form in der Musik: Stationen
eines Begriffs 1795-1850, Kassel: Brenreiter, 1990 (Marburger Beitrge zur Musikwissenschaft; 6).

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and itself constitutive of everything that can be objectively known about it.25 Hence,
Hauptmanns theory constitutes itself in the space of immanent identity between the
structure of thought and the apperception of the object as it is constituted in thought.26
Unlike Rameaus schematic representation of the triadic source of harmony,
Hauptmanns harmonic and metrical theory describes a hierarchical chain of continuous
becoming. In order to accomplish this, he has recourse to a special vocabulary modeled
on that of the nineteenth-century German idealists, but having its closest kinship with
Hegels modes of description. What this specialized descriptive terminology makes
available to him is a theoretical language of evolving and transforming harmonic
structures, and their merging with temporal processes totally excluded from Rameaus
rational account. In short, if the dimension of Rameaus theory was essentially spatial,
Hauptmanns description takes shape in the dimension of time.
Like that of Rameau, Hauptmanns stated objective is to bring the existing laws of music
under a single unifying principle.27 Yet where Rameaus investigation was determined by
the source of sound, the undivided string and its directly generated intervals, Hauptmann,
in what could be construed as a reference to, or transposition of, Rameaus central claim,
describes the triad in terms of its three directly intelligible intervals. The shift of focus from
object to subject is immediately apparent. Hauptmanns formulation, so often repeated
in late nineteenth-century treatises most notably by Riemann, and also Helmholtz and
von Oettingen is as follows: There are three directly intelligible intervals: I) the octave;
II) the fifth; III) the (major) third. They are unchangeable (NHM, 5). Hauptmanns
meaning, it must be remarked, is not that the octave, fifth and third are directly intelligible
to the senses, as is sometimes assumed. The condition of their intelligibility lies not in
the sensible expression of intervals themselves; it is rather that from among all possible
intervals, these intervals and only these, express in their relation to one another, a more
general and universal underlying notion that something which at first subsists for
intuition [Anschauung] in immediate totality, parts from itself [auseinandertrete] into its
own opposite [Gegensatz], and that this opposite is in turn abolished [wiederaufhebe] to
let the whole be produced again as one with its opposite, as a whole correlated in itself
(NHM, xliii). The manifestation of this in itself intangible inner structure in the mode
of intervals (among other possible modes, for example key or meter), yields the mutual
interrelation of octave, fifth, and major third, and it is in this sense that they are directly
intelligible and unchangeable.
The correlated whole, the major triad, is described as embodying within itself the
inner tension of the opposition between the static self-identity of the octave (unity), and
its self-contradiction in the fifth that is latently contained in it an opposition that is
redirected back into itself in the unifying element of the third: an element inseparable
25 As Schelling explains in his System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), objective knowledge comes into focus
only indirectly: [W]hereas in common knowledge, knowledge itself (the act of knowing) disappears in the
face of the object, in transcendental knowledge, the object disappears qua object, and only the act by which
knowledge proceeds remains. Smtliche Werke III, 345, quoted in: Jean Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure
of Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit, transl. Samuel Cherniak and John Heckman, Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1974, 19.
26 Hauptmann writes propos of his theory: We must distinguish this manner of theoretical contemplation from
the theory which bears immediately upon practice: the theory of harmonic and metrical shape in itself from
the theory of the art of composition (NHM, xlvi). Wir mssen aber diese theoretische Betrachtungsweise
unterscheiden von der Theorie, die unmittelbar in die Praxis eingreift: die Theorie der harmonischen und
metrischen Gestaltung an sich, von der Theorie der Tonsetzkunst (NHM, 1873 German edition, 12).
27 In the broadest relations of the expanded musical work to its narrowest particular, Hauptmann writes, in
all elements of its harmonic-melodic, and also of its metrical-rhythmical existence, there will always be only
one law to be traced for its right and intelligible construction (NHM, xxxix, translation slightly modified).

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from the opposition from which it derives its meaning. Hauptmann supports his reading
of the triad by invoking the equal and unequal divisions of the string that produce the
octave (division by one-half, giving rise to the notions of unity, (Einheit) identity, or
equality with self ), and the fifth (the two-thirds division of the same string, representing
the notion of inequality, duality (Zweiheit, Trennung) or inner opposition understood
here in the sense of something that opposes itself, and not in the sense of the opposition
of one thing to something else), and the relation of these divisions to those of the major
third (division by four-fifths) in which the union (Verbindung) of the opposites is
conceivable.28 The triad, then, is conceived as the locus of a confluence of contradictory
forces, at once sundered and reflected back into itself.
In contrast to Rameau, whose triad has the abstract referentiality of the sign which
points beyond itself to an external materiality, Hauptmanns triad constitutes itself in the
autonomous concreteness of its own space. Not the materiality of the intervals, but the
dialectical rhythm of the tension of self-opposition conserved in unity casts the theory in
both its synchronic and its diachronic aspects, operating simultaneously on the level not
just of the triad but also of key, scale, meter and rhythm as well as in the details of voiceleading, dissonance treatment, harmonic and rhythmic progression, and modulation. It
is through the relational and functional constants (symbolized by Hauptmanns generic
use of the terms octave-, fifth-, and third-meaning), that the otherwise disparate elements
of music are integrated with one another in an architectonic, vertical projection within
which the horizontal axis, or succession, is embedded.
It is not a poetics of representation that characterizes Hauptmanns theory, but a poetics
of formation. In its insistence on process as the condition of understanding, it not only
undermines the stability of the fixed, exterior surface the spatialized catalogue of stable
positive entities it also destabilizes the exterior position of the observer. Like language, the
theory of music is seen not as an exterior thing available at leisure to empirical observation,
but instead, as abiding in the undifferentiated space of emerging tonal and metrical processes
that have no independent prior being (as given entities or objects) apart from the individual
action, the intention that shapes and motivates them in time. Nonetheless, Hauptmann
does make use of charts and symbols in his treatise; yet these are invariably animations,
as for example the diagram in Example 2, showing the formation of the key from the
inherent self-oppositions of the triad.
The top level shows the triad as simple unity or octave meaning. The middle level
shows the self-opposition of the triad, through the tension of the double meaning of root
or fifth exerted on the tonic by the dominants on each side. The bottom level shows the
new unity of the key, with the correlative function of the tonic engendered in and through
the sundering movement of the extremities. (The symbols I-----II represent not first and
second, but simply the relation of opposition; the symbol III represents the integration of
the opposition into a higher unity.)

28 Hauptmanns somewhat strained justification of the four-fifths division as the mediator between one-half and
two-thirds is that the division of four-fifths is related to the octave by its numerator (twice two corresponds
to the equal division of the octave) and to the fifth by its denominator (five is the number that cannot be
divided into equal whole numbers, and therefore represents unequal division) (NHM, 6). As Rummenhller
points out, Hauptmanns illustration of the relation of the intervals in the triad by invoking numbers and
string divisions should not be interpreted as an empiricist move, but rather as an illustration, in the language
of numbers, of the moments of the triadic formation (Moritz Hauptmann als Theoretiker, p. 28). It must be
added, however, that Hauptmanns theory in no way positions itself in opposition to empirical evidence, but
rather contends only that the analytical methodology of empiricist and also rationalist approaches cannot
provide an adequate framework for the conceptual apparatus necessary for the processes of musical thinking
namely, access to a direct logic of progression and succession.

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Example 2
Hauptmanns diagram of key formation.

The diagram shows a three-stage process, very much like diagrams of the successive stages of
cell-division. The intention is not to show a static formal configuration, but the formation
of the key as action. Yet the analogy of animation, the idea of the moving, as opposed
to the still picture, despite the fact that it conjures the dimension of time, is misleading
and not entirely accurate. For the moving picture is still a view; it still implies an external
observer position, which, if we take Hauptmanns metaphysical stance seriously, would be
a misunderstanding of his intentions. The diagram is intended not as a slack image of the
stages of development of an exterior object, but as the inner dynamics of the formation of
a self-contained entity apprehended through the functional categories, not of the linearity
of the subdominant tonic dominant sequence, but the movement from octave- to fifthmeaning, from repose to self-sundering, and the reflection of this opposition back into itself,
which is the actualization, the concrete embodiment of the uneasy harmonic network of the
unified key. In this reading of the diagram as formative in act, the gaze of the observer is no
longer detached from the object no longer looks from the outside onto an exterior surface,
but is immersed and constitutive of the formative movement itself. For not only should the
diagram be read in time, but the triad itself must here be understood as generating time, or
valid only in a temporal framework in which the movement of consciousness produces the
object in the dialectical passage from simultaneity (the triad) to succession (key).
As Hauptmann writes about his use of symbols, the organic property of a membered
whole can never be represented exhaustively, either by symbols, numbers, or words
it can only be indicated to reason, which has the power of reproducing alive, the living
thought conjured into symbols and words (NHM, 11, emphasis mine).29 It is in a similar
vein that Humboldt, in his essay On Language (183640) writes:
The comprehension of words involves much more than the mere evocation of the sound of
the object indicated. Conversing together is never comparable with a transfer of material. In
the understander, as in the speaker, the same thing must be evolved from the inner power of
29 Die organische Beschaffenheit eines gegliederten Ganzen ist berhaupt so wenig durch Zeichen und
Zahlen als durch Worte erschpfend darzustellen; sie ist nur einem verstndig fhlenden, d. h. vernnftigen
Entgegenkommen, das den in Zeichen, Zahlen und Worte gebannten lebendigen Gedanken lebendig zu
produciren vermag, geistig anzudeuten (NHM, 1873 German edition, 25).

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each; and what the former receives [from the speaker] is merely the harmoniously attuning
structure.30 (emphasis mine)

Seen from this perspective, then, we must interpret Hauptmanns diagram not at all as an
image corresponding to an independent entity outside, but rather as speculative act of
both author and reader an event that belongs not to the transcendent plane of theoretical
abstraction, but to an immanent space, saturated with the dynamic cross-purposes that
are preserved in the unified key. We might cite in this context a well-known passage from
the preface of Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit, out of the many such descriptions in
Hegels philosophical writings, that expresses the dynamics in question:
The bud disappears in the bursting-forth of the blossom, and one might say that the former
is refuted by the latter; similarly, when the fruit appears, the blossom is shown up in its
turn as a false manifestation of the plant, and the fruit now emerges as the truth instead.
These forms are not just distinguished from one another, they also supplant one another as
mutually incompatible. Yet at the same time their fluid nature makes them moments of an
organic unity in which they not only do not conflict, but in which each is as necessary as the
other; and this mutual necessity alone constitutes the life of the whole.31

Rameaus deduction of the rules of harmony follows from a fixed simple nature, an evident
certainty: the association of the intervals of the perfect triad with their generating source
to which all subsequent rules are traceable and in which they find their justification.
Hauptmanns treatise, by contrast, is the description of a network of relations everywhere
present and operative an invisible shaping principle that operates in the formation
of intelligible harmonic and metrical shape; a network in which understanding and
intelligibility are predicated on the process of formation itself, in the context of the
functional constants that ground the relations it brings to view. Where Rameaus
methodology led immediately to a theoretical representation of harmonic structures
reliant on a system of signification, an analytical language based on the association of the
fundamental bass with the chord, from Hauptmanns perspective it is not the root relation
in and of itself that reveals how musical elements are connected to one another: indeed,
throughout the NHM emphasis is less on the separation of chords into distinct entities,
than on the greater network of relations of which they are part, and which constitute
the conditions of their emergence. As a result, the next level of theoretical development
from the triad is not a reproduction, on various scale degrees, of similar triads, each
issuing from a separate root (as is the case in Rameaus Treatise), and to be unified only
subsequently within a key structure defined and imposed by a cadential syntax, but the
form-generating tension of inner self-opposition, that leads necessarily from the triad
to a triad of triads, which is the complex relational network of the key.32 The concept of
key, in other words, is not a level of organization that is added to the primary material,
but rather and this is the crux of the ontological distance that separates Hauptmanns
theory from Rameaus deductive procedures in the Treatise it is a level of organization
that emerges and concretizes itself from the same principle of dialectical self-movement
which formed the logical framework of the triad.
30 Wilhelm von Humboldt, On Language: The Diversity of Human Language-Structure and its Influence on the
Mental Development of Mankind, transl. Peter Heath, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, 57.
31 Georg W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, transl. A.V. Miller, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977, 2.
32 With the introduction of the concept of the sous-dominante or under-dominant in the Nouveau systme
in place of the chord of the fourth degree (quatrime degre) in the Treatise, the topography of the key in
Rameaus theory shifts to the symmetrical formation of subdominant/tonic/dominant that is reflected in
Hauptmanns theory.

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Observing Rameau from this perspective, we see an inherent conceptual duality, a

separation between the quasi-independent harmonic entities and the rules of their
correct musical manipulation that reverberates throughout his theoretical oeuvre, and is
observable in his successive attempts to integrate the principles of harmonic progression,
the derivation of scales, dissonance treatment and key formation with the fixed primary
material of the triad. Indeed, one might view the developmental trajectory of Rameaus
theoretical work as a response to the problem of the unification of theory and praxis under
a common principle, through the integration of the structure of the given chord of nature
with the conventions of the harmonic language of his day: a problem to which Rameau
never found a wholly adequate solution. What remains difficult of access in Rameaus
theory is the possibility of elaborating a direct logic of harmonic invention, independent
of normative paradigms and stylistic practices. What is at stake in Hauptmanns doctrine
on the other hand, with his emphasis on process and the stages of emergence of an
autonomous theory, is first overcoming the duality that separates the act of knowing from
the object of knowledge, and second, establishing a logical autonomy for music theory,
and thus presenting an alternative to methodologies based on a normative, but ultimately
ephemeral common practice. We might observe a shift in the criteria of understanding
from an original and fixed empirical given in Rameau to a mental activity and a way of
cognizing in Hautpmann; from a beginning from the standpoint of inertia, to one that
takes motion and growth as its starting point. Where Rameaus theory presents itself on a
single plane, outside temporal processes, Hauptmanns theory takes shape in the constant
flux of interlocking stages of development in time. And where Rameaus theoretical
construction is ultimately transitive, seeking its materialization and justification in a
reality beyond itself, Hauptmanns theory is distinguished by its self-standing autonomy,
by its internal density, and ultimately, by its intransitivity.33 Neither theory belongs to
the same field of vision; each ultimately expresses a different approach to knowledge
proposes a different type of science, each with its own methods of reasoning and manners
of proof.

33 Hegel writes [T]he purpose does not pass over, but preserves itself, in its operation; i.e., it brings only itself
about and is at the end what it was in the beginning, or in its originality: what is truly original comes to be
only through this self-preservation. The Encyclopedia Logic, transl. A. Suchtig and H.S. Harris, Indianapolis:
Hackett Publishing Company, 1991, 280, 204Z.

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